There Was a Tornado Once
A story from growing up.
Author’s note: I’m working on a book. Maybe more than one. This is a story. We will see where it ends up. There is nothing special or medical or policy-related here. It’s just a story. With that…
“It’ll be fine,” said my mother after I asked her to turn down the radio in the car.
We had just heard the news that a tornado was coming. Like, coming to where we were. Morris, Connecticut is a very small town. It’s basically a four-way intersection with a pizza place, and that’s about it. Driving from Litchfield, where I grew up, to the bustling metropolis of Watertown, which I call a bustling metropolis because it had both a Marshalls and a Stop & Shop, would take you through Morris. We were driving, in a green Subaru outback, the official car of people who have to drive in the snow and well-marketed segmented lesbian couples.
“A tornado?”
My experience with tornadoes was limited to the Wizard of Oz. Tornadoes were things that started movies, and took you off to magical lands. It sounded exciting.
“V, I haven’t eaten“
My grandmother was 76 years old by this time. Her name is Victoria. She was also a V. The V my grandmother was referring to was my mom, Vita. Two marriages after her naming, she went from Vita Roberta Bivona—a respectable name for a Perillo, Victoria Perillo’s maiden name—to Vita West Muir. This seem to me to be an upgrade.
“Mom, it’ll be OK. You have your insulin?”
My grandmother had diabetes. I didn’t really know what that meant at the time. I knew it meant she had to eat sometimes, and that she had to take insulin, and check her sugar.
“I have my insulin, but I actually already took some this morning. I thought we were going to eat lunch.”
The sky darkened. And when I say darkened, I don’t mean “got darker because it’s closer chronologically to the end of the day and the sunset that happens with it.” I mean darkened abruptly, over the course of 1 to 2 minutes. Attenuated sunlight was coming through the clouds and created a parody of dusk, as if dusk got sick to its stomach. The sky became an unwell shade of green, and there was the slightest hint of a swirl in the darkness.
Had I been older than six, I would’ve thought about the word apocalyptic. I would have compared the abrupt change in the sky to an imagined end times. It would be two or three years before that word would come immediately to mind. Upon further examination, the sky seemed like it was definitely going to throw up. Thunder.